- City:
- Tulelake, CA
- Site Type:
- Parks and Recreation, Forestry and Agriculture, Fire Lookouts
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
Description
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Abe Boehm, a CCC enrollee (Company 3740) stationed at Camp Clear Lake in northeastern California between February and June of 1937:
“The CCC boys from Clear Lake fenced off the Petroglyphs. The reason they needed a fence was that the tourists would chip the rocks off for souvenirs . When we first went there, 90% of the Petroglyphs were still intact, but every day you’d see a few fresh chips missing. So out crew’s job was to build the fence and a tower that the game wardens and sheriffs could use for observation. It was on the south end, between the mountain and those buildings out by the railroad. The Tule Lake CCC built a rock house up there on Sheepy Ridge for the same purpose, and its still there.
In fact, the last job I did for the CCC was to paint that tower. Now, if you don’t think that was a scary thing! Five or six of us had to take turns sitting outside the tower in a boson’s chair, painting. And that tower was exactly 99 feet tall. There was some kind of a law that it wasn’t supposed to go over 100 feet. It was high enough.”
–“A Good Deal – Life in the CCCs”
Source notes
Barbara Ditman, “A Good Deal – Life in the CCCs,” in We Can Take It: The Civilian Conservation Corps in the Land of the Lakes, The Shaw Historical Library, Oregon Institute of Technology, 2006. Pgs. 16-18.Contribute to this Site
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Submit More Information or Photographs for this New Deal Site2 comments on “Sheepy Ridge Tower – Tulelake CA”
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Doug Halvorsen
I think I have seen photos of that site by Anders Tomlinson of tule-lake.com . Anyway last I heard he lived near there. You could ask him.
I recently visited the Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge and the visitor center that is located at the base of Sheepy Ridge, along Hill Rd (also known as the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway). I hiked up Sheepy Ridge Trail to the lookout. Some fantastic views up there of Tule Lake below. I’ve also read that the lava rock walls that exist in front of the visitor center were built by CCC workers, more specifically, by Mexican-American artisans. The lava rock walls are still in impeccable condition today.